Camping Doesn't Suck! (Except When it Does)
Family camping in Baltimore during a manhunt, the agony of the Apache Eagle, and a week spent on the Appalachian Trail
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: camping is cool, kind of.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.
Ingredient List
🎵 : “Let’s Start Degeneracy” - Microwave // As part of the modern emo revival, I loved their first couple albums and saw them at the Metro Gallery here in Baltimore back in 2017, and have been enjoying this album.
“Passage Du Desir” - Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies // His first album under his new alter ego is as solid as ever, proving that he’s still one of the most authentic artists out there, following his own path, wherever it may take him.
📖 : “The Overstory” by Richard Powers // My friend Ryan gave me this book after I wrote about trees last week. It’s a long one and I’m only a few chapters in, but so far so good, looking forward to reading the rest.
This Past Week
Did a little campout in Patterson Park here in Baltimore with the fam (which you’ll read about shortly). Saw some friends and swam in their pool (who you’ll also read about shortly). Capped off the week with a date night to see Mt. Joy at Merriweather Post Pavilion. They impressed me and were way better live than I had expected them to be. Really great show overall and this cover of Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” is flat-out excellent.
Lastly, quick shout-out to my boy Lin, who rocked the Robbe Raccoon signature Legionnaire to the Run Travis Run 5K this weekend and snuck it into a selfie with Travis Barker.
Some other things I wrote this week:
Brooks Hyperion Max 2 (shoe review for Believe in the Run)
I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round-up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic manner. You can subscribe here.
And now, onto dinner service.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Clamshells and Catfish
You might be a redneck if your pop-up camper is popped up in your yard and not at a campground. Which was how our pop-up camper sat, sometimes for a whole summer, an extra place to play or sleep or scare my sister’s friends when she’d have a sleepover.
We did use it for actual camping though, and when we did, we felt like real travelers, like we somehow earned the privilege of sleeping in a glorified tent with a stove inside.
We did earn it though, because we first had to endure the years and nights that felt like years in our first pop-up, a rudimentary and strictly utilitarian version whose sole mission was to keep people from using it at all costs. It was an Apache Eagle, a name that manages to embrace both colonizer and colonized. It had no sink, no water hookup, no electricity. It pulled out into a double bed on each side, and a fold-up formica table in the center that also turned into a kid’s bed at night by adding an extra seat cushion. Those cushions were mostly vinyl, as was every cushion from the 1970s. It was orange on the outside, that shade that can only be found in lava lamps and shag carpeting.
That camper was made of two things: heavy canvas and heavy metal, the latter being the closest I would ever get to Metallica or Pantera as a kid. Most of my memories of this camper were problems. As with canvas tents back then, the whole thing always seemed impossible to pack down after it was opened for the first time, refusing to go back to its home, like a mollusk rebelling against its own shell. Things moved an inch at a time before getting stuck. From the zippers to the metal poles to the door latch. The sides and doors never really sealed, more or less throwing out the welcome mat for the local mosquito population. It spoke in Tolkienesque sentiments: What’s already opened cannot be closed. Thou shalt not pass.
Speaking of passing, I’m not sure it’s ever something we should’ve done on the highway with our Chevy Caprice station wagon trailing a metal lunchbox on wheels behind us. It always seemed like my dad was dismantling an atomic bomb when attempting to attach the rear signal wires to the wiring harness next to the hitch. The same hitch that took an hour to line up anytime we were leaving for vacation, giving zero assurance that it would hold over the slightest pothole. There was always a popped tire or broken latch or forgotten key.
On one vacation, the first and last time we’d ever attempt such a feat of endurance, we decided to head to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. For most families, this would be an 8-hour trip from south central Pennsylvania. Armed with an atlas and a back seat full of bickering kids, our singular goal seemed to double that estimate. Let’s put it this way– if my family attempted a journey on the Oregon Trail during the westward expansion, we’d just be arriving now, wondering why we didn’t just Uber the whole thing. In all, it took us over 12 hours to get to our destination, a full 20% of our vacation wiped off the books.
As we pulled into the campground, our home for the next five (now four) days, us kids would stare out the windows like nutcrackers in a storefront Christmas display, hoping one of the other campers would kidnap us and take us home, or at least let us see inside their mansions. These were campers in the most generous sense of the word. They were outside, yes, but they were also sitting under cantina-lit awnings attached to their 40-foot Winnebagos, satellite perched to the roof of the travel trailer, A/C units doing their best work on the living quarters, waving to us in the same way that bystanders in Southampton waved to the passengers of the Titanic as they passed by to their final destination.
After 15 minutes of jackknifing into our camping spot, we got out and took in the surrounding area. Were we even allowed here? We were the only pop-up camper in the entire place, luxury on all sides, retirees living their best lives. We may have been mistaken for the Joad family, a modern Steinbeck clan traveling from the Dust Bowl to Kitty Hawk, hoping to catch the miracle of flight. Of course, we were late.
The campground was East Coast beachy at its best: sand everywhere, zero shade, its only attractive quality being its proximity to the ocean.
My mom assumed her role in making dinner, which– when camping without electricity– is the most complicated version of the task. Figuring out which cooler things were placed in, realizing what was forgotten back home, keeping sand out of everything– an impossible ask for anyone. Unfortunately for her, she brought along the same three picky eaters that she dealt with on a nightly basis at home, who were relentless in their complaints of the menu choice for the evening.
I don’t remember everything from that trip, but I remember this: the sunburn. I’m not sure if sunscreen was just hit or miss back then– maybe you got a good batch, maybe you didn’t. Or if everyone was too concerned about trying to actually get five minutes of a vacation out of this whole ordeal that we forgot to apply even one coat of protection. Either way, we got absolutely cooked on our first day at the beach.
That evening, we came back to our camper, the one that had been baking in the open sun, accumulating heat inside as if it were a precious resource that couldn’t be shared with the outside world. The screens seemed to do the reverse of their purpose, a micromesh waffle iron trapping all of July’s power inside, a whole grid of jail cell bars keeping it from getting out.
I remember lying there, skin radiating with all the hallmarks of a nuclear fallout, basted in aloe gel, the closest I’d ever come to getting slimed in a Nickelodeon challenge. Thinking the night would ever end and hoping the pain would. Sweating inside that thick canvas pop-up. Wondering how any place on earth could ever be hotter. To this day, I’m not sure I’ve found it.
Eventually we upgraded to a nicer pop-up, a Coleman of some sort that had all the modern luxuries one could want. Basically, a sink and electric, which was fully appreciated after five years spent living in an Amish version of a pop-up. Air actually moved through the camper, the beds were comfortable, and the zippers closed. It was almost too good, which is probably why we kept it open for most of the year from that point forward.
I want to say that the Apache Eagle served us well, that we have fond memories or our time spent at various state parks, from Raystown Lake to Luray Caverns to the Outer Banks. But that would be a lie. It was hot and miserable and difficult and cumbersome and I hope it died a terrible and painful death in a junkyard compactor somewhere.
At the very least, it kept us outside longer– sitting by a campfire, riding bikes around the campground, catching catfish after dark. I guess that’s camping after all.
And for that, I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer: Sterno S’mores
This weekend, we went camping. Not in the backcountry, not in a state park, and certainly not in a national park. It was backyard camping, in a sense. Baltimore’s backyard– Patterson Park.
For those of you not from Baltimore, Patterson Park is a 55-acre green space in the heart of southeast Baltimore that serves the community with sports fields, walking paths, athletic courts, and a representation of peak 19th-century park design. On its south side lies one of the more prosperous neighborhoods in Baltimore (Canton), while just a few blocks north of the park is one of the poorest and most dangerous parts of the city (North Patterson Park/McElderry). Twenty years ago, nobody went into the park at night. Even now, it’s probably not recommended. On this night, we were camping in it.
An organization called Friends of Patterson Park has done a great deal in turning the park around, and this weekend, they organized an event called Park in the Dark, opening up the top of Hampstead Hill for a camping event open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. We would be camping on the same grounds that troops organized for the decisive battle of North Point in the War of 1812.
When I told people we were camping in Baltimore, in the city, the response was– really? Yes, really. We go hard like that. But halfway through our 12 hours in camp, I was having the same thoughts myself. Because it was a true Baltimore experience.
Starting out, everything was remarkably smooth. We parked close by, unloaded our gear, including a tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and camp chairs. The weather was about as perfect as you could get in July, especially after a week full of heat that hit harder than a blackjack player showing eleven. We checked in, got our bracelets and looked for a place to set up our tent.
We were one of the last families there, so I posted up in one of the clear spaces left, right near a large fountain that I figured would provide a natural sound machine. As we were setting up, I noticed a trio of three women nearby, and a couple of them just had a tarp lying in the grass with their pillows on it. Interesting, but okay.
As we set up, the sun set down, with pink and orange hues that felt like the best version of summer. Kids ran around and played baseball or soccer or whatever other games they came up with. A s’mores station was rolled out, complete with tables full of Sterno cans ready for roasting. Laughter and conversation flowed through the air. Everything was going so well that the vibe felt more Boulder than Baltimore.
The moon was rising, orange and smoky above the treeline, as we all headed out on a nature walk down to the Patterson Park boat pond. But we couldn’t really hear the directions, because as the day went to bed, the chaos was just waking up.
Appearing above us was the loud chop-chop sound of helicopter blades, circling over and over. We spotted a bird in the sky on our nature hike and it was Foxtrot, the Baltimore Police Department’s aviation unit. It was going hard in a tight circle, its searchlights right over our camp area, sometimes washing us in its bright-white tractor beam. Something was happening, someone was on the run. A police SUV passed us in the park. For the next 15 minutes the chopper pulled tight circles over and over, trying to track someone down. Eventually it left.
We’d learn in the morning why: at the same time as our kids were making s’mores in the soft glow of a summer evening, a 12-year-old girl was shot and killed by her mother’s boyfriend, four blocks north of us. The two Baltimores, in stark relief.
After the nature walk, which consisted of us looking at some uneventful lily pads with headlamps, we started to settle into our tents. Quiet hours started at 10; my kids were reading by the glow of a Black Diamond lamplight, while Kimi and I sat talking in camp chairs outside the tent. Eventually we all turned in.
The sound of the water fountain provided a nice backdrop, and I did indeed fall asleep pretty quickly. For 10 minutes, anyway. Because then I heard voices, which seemed to be coming from inside my tent. As anyone who’s gone camping knows– tent voices travel 10x further than real voices, even further than the echolocation of humpback whales. It’s just science. Turns out, the ladies on the tarp were part of a trio in a two-person tent just ten feet away from us. However, instead of sleeping in their tent, they were half-in/half-out– heads in the tent, feet out. Prior to that point, they had all been on their phones, but decided that midnight was the time to relive their best moments in life. Loud laughter accompanied loud voices. It would not stop.
Here is where I take full responsibility for my predicament. Because at one point in my life, I was these women. My friends and I surely annoyed other campers by laughing and drinking around the campfire, our voices carrying over several sites. Rolling into a hiker shelter area at 9 p.m. and setting up camp, staying up until midnight. I hate myself for doing it then, but I am willing to accept my punishment now.
The comedy show next door continued to carry on and the rest of the city decided to join in. Dirt bikes revved up Patterson Park Avenue. Minutes later, a loud car exhaust, apparently going around the perimeter of the entire park. Shortly after that, a thump-boom of mortar-style fireworks from the south end of the park. That happened four times over the next fifteen minutes. Police cars wailing, fire trucks blaring. More helicopters. Trains that went seemingly every 30 minutes, the same trains that run a quarter mile behind my house but were somehow 10 times louder, two miles away. Again– it’s camping science and it can’t be explained. Anything that will be loud, can and will be louder.
The women kept talking and laughing. It sounded like they were getting closer, a tell-tale heart beating louder and louder. I put earplugs in. It somehow sounded even worse, everything muffled out except the frequency of their voices.
The clock turned from 12:30 to 1:30. I exhausted every article on The New York Times front page and my personal Substack recommendations. I took a CBN gummy. The combination of THC and CBD was no match for the voices beside me. The tent was hot, my sleeping space was tight. I got up to go to the bathroom. A man was walking his dog, throwing him a frisbee– on pavement. The sound of the dog dragging the frisbee on the ground was the cherry on top of the sound sundae.
I strongly considered abandoning my family in the cloak of night, leaving a note that said “went to grab some milk,” and going home to the comfort of my own bed. It was so close. I could even run there if I had to. I thought about just getting up and doing my long run then and there. But that gummy was making my legs heavy. I couldn’t risk falling asleep mid-run, falling sideways into the dark harbor water.
I tried to put in my open earbuds over my earplugs, and set it to the white noise machine on my phone. It seemed to work, a little bit. Around 2 a.m., things were finally quiet in the tent beside us. I drifted off to sleep, or at least that weird purgatory stage of sleep, the kind that cowboys do with one hand on their six shooter and a hat over their eyes, cognizant of everything happening around them while still getting a modicum of rest.
The city seemed to calm down. Soon enough, the dawn’s early light appeared over Hampstead Hill. People were moving, kids were playing. Bagels and coffee showed up. I was well rested, if the standard for rest is the state of a Guantanamo Bay detainee after a week of intense questioning. I moved out of the tent and packed things up, only because I had to.
I gave up on the idea of a Saturday morning long run, everything inside of me was dead. Instead, I sat down on the couch and wrote this.
So yes, camping in Baltimore is a thing, and it’s exactly like camping in Baltimore. Violence, chaos, community, beauty, loud noises, but trying its best to be better, to be the chocolate in the middle of a burnt marshmallow.
That said, I prefer to keep my work and pleasure separate. So next time, I’ll keep the camping to the county. Or maybe I’ll just eat the whole bag of sleep gummies.
Course 3
The Main: Fried Spam with Kraft Mac and Cheese
A green tunnel, a pile of rocks, a walk in the woods– these are all words than can describe the experience of the Appalachian Trail, or the ‘AT’ for short. One of two iconic and eponymous trails in the United States– the other being the Pacific Crest Trail– the AT is a nearly 2,200 mile trail that threads through the heart of the eastern United States, starting in Springer Mountain, Georgia, and ending on top of Mt. Katahdin, Maine.
To complete the whole thing in one season is an ambitious undertaking, but more and more people are drawn to the endeavor each year– since the 1970s, the amount of thru-hikers has nearly doubled each decade. In total, over 21,000 people have completed the journey. Plenty of others have section hiked the trail (i.e. completing certain portions of it over time until all the puzzle pieces are complete).
Despite growing up within 10 miles of the trail as the crow flies, I really didn’t experience the AT until later in life. Much of my childhood was spent camping, but none of it was spent backpacking. As kids, we complained about carrying our school backpacks from the front door to the bus, so I wouldn’t have risked being stuck on a trail with us either. And while I had backpacked a few times in college, none of it was ever spent on the Appalachian Trail.
Eventually, I got my feet on the path, and it was weirder and more wonderful than I could have dreamed of.
If you’ve read this Substack for any time at all, you may recall my weird summer(s) as a fireworks tent operator. These were freewheeling times– I was tied down to no one and nowhere. I made enough money to pay my cell phone bill and rent and get me to the next week and then I figured it out from there. Also, my mom may have paid my cell phone bill, but who’s keeping score?
There was a lot of drifting that summer– it started out in May when we went on tour with The Young International, a band from Nashville who we were best friends with. Their bassist, David, and I were thick as thieves and we basically spent every night drinking and talking until dawn, dreaming up some other life where we weren’t broke and sleeping on kitchen floors. One of those dreams was hiking the Appalachian Trail, at least for a while that summer. We threw some feelers out to other friends to see who was on board.
Another friend, Ali, came on board, who was also very good at drifting, always joining us on the road whenever he put down the student debt shovel and took a break from collecting multiple post-graduate degrees. Ali was the only person who had actual plans in life (he’s an oncology doctor now so it somehow worked out), so it came down to him to plan out the actual trip. To say Ali is ambitious at planning would be an understatement– there was a nearly minute-by-minute itinerary, checkpoints to hit, campsites to reach. The goal was something like 120 miles over the course of 8 days. This seemed doable, for reasons I still can’t comprehend. I think the math was something like this: it takes 20 minutes to walk a mile, so if we just walk for 6 hours each day, that’ll get us to 18 miles. Easy!
Absolutely no thought of pack weight or elevation or the fact that we were in no shape to do activities beyond playing instruments on stage and throwing dice on a flattened cardboard case of Keystone Light. My training was walking around the fireworks tent parking lot in a pair of Columbia trail shoes that I bought the week before. We only had youth on our side and a can-do attitude that would run us against a wall in due time.
Again, I had some experience with camping so I knew how to pack a pack, what I needed and what I didn’t. I kept it moderately lightweight, or at least did as well as I could without true ultralight gear. It was a mixed bag with the other dudes. Two other guys came as well, brothers and residents of New York City who only had a tarp for a tent, which I still don’t get. In any case, we all met at the Delaware Water Gap, and we were on our way.
Within the first mile, we saw a large timber rattlesnake crossing the path. Cool cool. Within the second mile we realized the reality of the Pennsylvania section of the Appalachian Trail. Translation: it’s really not a trail. Sure, it’s a navigable pathway in that it’s a general clearing that goes forward through the forest. But the trail itself? It’s just rocks. Many, many rocks. So many, that it seems almost like a practical joke, as if someone carved the trail, saw that it was good, and the next night God wagged his finger and said– nah ah– snowing sedimentary softballs over the entire state, and New Jersey as well, just for good measure.
If you’ve never experienced Rocksylvania, well, I’m not going to say you should. Because it’s dumb. Imagine picking out a perfect rock for rolling ankles. That’s all the rocks. And they’re everywhere you walk, for miles and miles, up mountains, down ravines, in riverbeds and under your own bed. If Elon Musk figured out a way to put them into batteries the place would be the hottest strip mine in all of earth. I’d send my own kids to work a few shifts just so I’d have a nice trail to run on.
So that was a surprise for us.
The first day was rather chill. We started in the afternoon and only hiked a handful of miles to post up for the night. Which was good, because we needed to lose the weight from the handle of whiskey we had brought with us. We drank the whole thing while playing cards before calling it a night. We were shocked to be alive in the morning, as our breath smelled like a dead animal that drowned in a bourbon barrel, but apparently bears aren’t scavengers so we were marked safe from nature.
Turns out that our packs were still not light. Luckily we only had a 20-mile hike ahead of us. We were a few hours into the hike when a ravenous hunger overtook us. Dreams of all foods of all kinds took over our mind– french fries, hamburgers, Sheetz subs. Our REI meals were relegated to hard tack status. Less than 24 hours into our journey, we felt like we were nearing the end of the line. We came upon some sort of ranger station that sold sandwiches and candy. Like Lloyd Christmas in a roadside diner, we grabbed everything in sight, and put it on Seabass’ tab, Seabass being Ali and his tab being money pulled out of his med school student loans. We were still alive, our hunger sated momentarily. We pressed on.
I don’t know how we made it 20 miles that day. Maybe it was the reward of multiple cigarettes after physical duress. Maybe it was because we had no other choice. We couldn’t exactly turn around. Either way, when we reached camp, the mutiny had taken hold. As a group, we notified Ali that we could not continue on like this– the itinerary must be amended. Which he did, thankfully.
From there, most days were in the 10-mile range. Difficult, but doable. It allowed us for multiple breaks. One of those breaks was a dive bar on a lake, every deep fried menu item calling to us like a long lost lover, the Penelope to our odyssey. That was day three.
Slowing down did allow us to slow down. Some people enjoy the trail by doing the opposite– going for Fastest Known Times (FKTs), essentially a world record for different trails and segments. Ultrarunner Karl Sabbe holds the overall supported FKT for the trail, finishing it in a little over 41 days going from Georgia to Maine, a feat that’s nearly impossible to comprehend when you’re tiptoeing over ankle breakers in Pennsylvania.
But for us, it was important to slow down. For obvious reasons– we were physically inept, and apparently bodies can only run on youth and young manhood for about 12 hours before giving up. However, there’s something about the AT that rewards you for taking it slow, especially when the walk is spent with friends.
We kind of stopped wherever we wanted, whether that was a detour to a waterfall or a side creek to catch (and cook) crayfish. We gave each other trail names whether we deserved them or not– Jelly Ankles (shockingly not me), Crawdad (me), Rabies Tears (David, after a bat may or may not have pissed on him in a shelter). I found a packet of Doritos seasoning on the side of the road and we mixed it into our dinner of fried Spam and Kraft mac and cheese. It was delightful.
We were traveling on the trail in early July, the same time that thru-hikers were coming through. We met plenty of them, heard their stories, their whys, how they navigated the logistical headache of such a long journey.
We saw trail magic everywhere we went and it really was magic– strangers who stock coolers at trailheads, leave baked goods on benches, open up their doors for dirty nomads. Over our days on the trail, we kept hearing about this one place in a small town in Jersey– the Mayor’s house. Apparently he really was (or used to be) the mayor, and he opened up his house and yard for any hikers to spend the night. The deal was two beers, dinner, and breakfast. All for free. Twenty-four hikers stayed there that night. We shared a breakfast with a bunch of them the next morning and crushed a 20-mile day, as if we belonged.
In a way, I hope I never truly belong. I have no desire to walk the AT for four months. But I could see when I would, and I hope I never do. Because I learned that a lot of the people on the journey each year are in the middle of figuring out big problems. Some had loved ones die, others lost their jobs, while plenty more just needed a reset on life. Huge stuff coming undone, clarity and healing coming from one footstep following another. Diving deep, hoping the world is different when they come back for air. It almost always is, somehow. The sharing of stories between each other, sometimes beside a campfire, sometimes by sleeping in a shelter next to a stranger. Soles and souls, both worn off.
Our little journey was just a week long, and we hit 90 miles in total. Maybe it was 70. I honestly don’t know, but it seemed significant as we crossed the corner of New Jersey and ended up in New York. When we reached the end of our own route, we took a side trail down the mountain and waited at a bus stop, packs and all, dirty as hell. The Greyhound picked us up and an hour later it dropped us off at the Port Authority in Manhattan. We walked outside, smack into the middle of Times Square– bright lights and billboards, taxis buzzing, horns blaring, everyone rushing, nobody paying attention to the guys with oversized packs and unshaven faces, doing their best to assimilate back into society.
Nobody knowing that it’s all too fast and that it doesn’t have to be so. That there’s a whole life out there where none of this matters, not who you are or where you’ve been, not whether you cash checks at a bodega or call shots from a corner office, where time slows down and the sunlight creates patterns more ornate than St. Patrick’s Cathedral, that the sound of a waterfall is both louder than 5th Avenue and quieter than the Ramble, and a mountaintop is so much higher than the Empire State.
Course 4
Dessert: Sea Trout
Really though, camping is the best. I wanted to do a whole ode to my Uncle Tom and Uncle Herman, both who were integral to my love of the outdoors. Also my time in college spent camping and canoeing in the Florida Everglades, three trips in all. And my bikepacking trips, some of my favorite memories of the past decade. I wish I had more time to do all those things, because there are so many wild and beautiful places here in the United States. Plus, I keep buying and accumulating camping gear with all the REI gift cards I get for my birthday and Christmas. Need to put that stuff to good use before the newest version of it comes out.
END OF MENU
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.
Lin’s the man. And great writing as usual.